I have a question regarding multiple airline booking and travel plans. My extended family and I are thinking of hitting Hawaii again this June right after school lets out and I have a few weeks off in between my regular job and my summer job. We’ve accumulated a lot of airline miles and would like to use them. The plan would be to get two free tickets, one using Hawaiian Miles and another using United Miles.

So, one group of family would have two people flying on Hawaiian and the other on United out of LAX to OGG. The UAL flight would likely be Flight 417. Both would depart sometime in the morning of the same day, within a few hours of each other. Whomever got in first could grab the rental car, etc. A similar arrangement would occur on the way back. Here’s the thing… What are the chances of the person flying solo getting bumped? If it was only a few hours wait ‘til the next flight it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but if it’s a much longer time period it would be a problem. I know that there are different criteria for getting bumped, which the Dr. Dao fiasco made apparent. Would someone flying solo on a “free” or “mostly free” airline mileage ticket be at a higher risk of being bumped? And, potentially bumped multiple times? That's our big worry.

There are a lot of moving parts here, so we're trying to iron out as many of the unknowns and "might be's" as possible while we're still in the planning stages. Many thanks for your observations.

Bob

PS. I hope this is the right subforum to post this in. Moderators, please feel to move this thread if it is not. Thank you!

I think that what's happened lately and has been in the media about people getting bumped from flights has given many people the idea that people getting bumped off of a flight happens all the time. In reality though the overwhelming majority of flights never bump passengers. Your chances of being bumped from a flight are incredibly low.